Jerri gave me a credit card to use in case of emergency. I’m beginning to suspect I have a good mother, Aleah, which means I can’t blame her for my lack of humanity or my narcissism.
Not Jerri’s fault.
After I wandered around for a half hour, staring at knickknack shops that sell magazines and little metal models of Chicago skyscrapers and these neck pillows that look like they would strangle me in my sleep and other assorted crap, the whole time wondering what in the whole wheat world I should do, Jerri called me (because I’d left her a message freaking out about how I was stranded and didn’t know what to do). She told me to go to Atlanta, except by that time there was no space left on the flight to Atlanta. I called Jerri back, and she said that this constituted an emergency and that I could use the credit card she’d stuck in my backpack, in the very back pocket, zipped in a pocket inside another pocket.
Oh yes. It terrified me to have to book a room. Mumbled and stumbled and I’m sure the clerk person thought I was mentally ill. But…
Now I’m on the biggest bed in the entire world! In a room with a big wood desk and serious air-conditioning!
Emergency!
I’ve taken an excellent shower and I’m wearing a robe, Aleah! It is the whitest, fluffiest robe on the entire planet!
There are also white slippers that say “Chicago Hilton O’Hare Airport” on them! My feet are too big to fit in them, but that’s okay. I don’t like slippers very much!
There’s a giant TV in here!
Emergency!
I like credit cards.
What else, Aleah?
Here’s something totally weird that just happened: There I was on my giant bed, minding my own business, resting with my thoughts and a little Tosh on the TV, when this reporter called me from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I don’t answer the phone if I don’t know the number, so I just watched it go to voice mail. In the message, the reporter said there was a rumor going around that I am committing to play football for Wisconsin, because I haven’t made any other visits and I skipped the Michigan camp.
Uh, no. I told colleges I’d make official visits this fall. (I didn’t want to last year because I’m new to football—okay, I just didn’t want to make visits.)
I skipped the Michigan camp for personal reasons (my brother disappeared and I don’t like people!), not because I was committing to any other school…
No! I haven’t committed to anything. I don’t want to commit yet!
You and I were going to try to go to school in the same area, remember? Maybe New York somewhere?
You were supposed to come to Bluffton for the summer too. But you didn’t….
I don’t want to commit. Should I call the reporter back?
No.
I like my little hotel room without anyone to talk to in it (except you, and you’re not really here).
Let me just tell you how my week of terror came to a close: We had a track meet against Lancaster that Thursday. Even though I sort of knew I was injured, I wanted to run because I hate Casey Steinhoff from Lancaster (John Spencer’s cousin—John dumped all that trash on my lawn last year, if you’ll recall). Like John Spencer, Casey calls me Squirrel Nut and Squee-Tard. So, I wanted to run against him and make him look like the jerk he is.
Revenge.
Unfortunately, I had a tiny man in my hamstring.
And right out of the blocks, the little man in my hamstring set off a napalm bomb that blew out my leg big-time (this was no ordinary strain—it was a Reinstein explosion), which led me to miss the rest of the track season. I fell over in a puddle screaming. Casey Steinhoff squealed with joy.
Picture me lying in a spring puddle, Aleah.
It was a huge deal that I got injured. I think Coach Knautz cried. I might have cried, except I was in a state of shock and could feel nothing at all.
Gus, you, Andrew, hamstring…
By Friday night, Aleah, I wasn’t sure who the hell I was. Seriously. The doctor in Dubuque told me I’d be fine to run normally by June but would miss going to Outdoor State in track…I just nodded. (It did all fall apart!)
Want to know a secret?
Here’s the dirtiest little secret I’ve got.
Although I moped and acted sad and depressed and told Cody I couldn’t take it…I was actually relieved not to have to race Roy Ngelale again. I was relieved I couldn’t run for coaches who came on evaluation visits in May. I was secretly hopeful I wouldn’t be able to go to the Michigan technique camp in late June, because I didn’t want anybody watching me run, asking me to sign any letter of intent. I liked the idea of disappearing.
I sort of still do.
After Jerri and I came back in the house that Friday after the doctor, I fell onto the couch without thoughts of you or Andrew or Gus or anyone, and I watched six of the best hours of TV I’ve ever watched. (Don’t even remember what I watched.) Around midnight, Jerri came down to tell me she was so sorry about my leg.
I whispered, “It’s okay.”
Then I slept like a baby.
Do you remember at Christmas when Andrew and I were in Chicago visiting and your dad gave me that poem by John Updike about the former high-school basketball star who never made it big and just ended up bouncing inner tubes around in a gas station? I think about that sometimes. I think, That could be me. I think, When I get old, I’ll sprint back and forth between pallet and shelf out at Walmart. I’ll be the fastest stock boy who ever lived.
It doesn’t make me sad, Aleah. I think I’d like being just a stock boy. Just a nobody.
I’ll serve the fastest slushy at Kwik Trip!
My dad was a collegiate national champion in tennis. He killed himself in the garage when I was five.
• • •
Do you think it’s cool if I order room service on Jerri’s credit card?
It’s kind of an emergency.
Donkey real hungry!